Brian Cox gave his take on the world’s most popular book this week in an interview on The Starting Line podcast with Rich Leigh, slamming the Bible as the “worst book ever.”
The Succession star said he thinks religion “holds us back because its belief systems, which are outside ourselves, they’re not dealing with who we all are, they’re dealing with well, ‘if God says this and God does that.’”
Cox has become known for his very strong, unfiltered public opinions. Most recently he stated that Joaquin Phoenix was “truly terrible” in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and added that he could’ve “played it a lot better.” Now, he’s got some spicy words for the Bible and religion, which he ultimately calls “stupid”—mostly because of the “patriarchal” lens it puts on the world.
“We created that idea of God and we created it as a control issue,” he continued on the podcast. “It’s also a patriarchal issue. That’s how it started and it’s essentially patriarchal. We haven’t given enough scope to the matriarchy and I think we need to move matriarchically.”
“We have to go more towards a matriarchy because the mothering thing is the thing which is the real conditioning of our lives,” he explained. “Our fathers don’t condition us ‘cause they’re too bloody selfish, but our mothers have to because they have an umbilical [cord],” he said, adding that women’s “umbilical relationship” to the their children contrasts a father’s: “Men do not have that, they’re just sperm banks—moveable sperm banks that walk around and come and go.”
A “matriarchal” society makes a lot more sense, Cox said, but the “propaganda” in the Bible gets in society’s way of this world view. “It’s Adam and Eve,” he continued, “The propaganda goes right the way back—The Bible is one of the worst books ever, for me, from my point of view because it starts with the idea that Adam’s rib—that out of Adam’s rib, this woman was created. I don’t believe it… ‘cause they’re stupid.”
Instead of this patriarchal worldview taken from the bible, Cox said, society should “honor” women and “give them their place.”
He ultimately concludes that people “need” religion because “they need some kind of truth,” but “they don’t need to be told lies.” And The Bible is “not the truth,” he stressed.
